trail running

Friday

On Thursday, I just about managed to do my two meetings, and then I took my team to a nice dinner in Phoenix. We had New Mexican food in Richardson’s, and it was great. The only issue is that we were already quite full after the appetizers. The portions are huge.

On Friday morning, my colleague and I drove to the Desert Vista Trailhead. We had about 40 minutes between sunrise and having to go back to the hotel to have breakfast and go to work. My colleague went on a short hike, and I ran for 22 minutes, then turned around and ran back.

It was still dark when we set off, and I had to use my cellphone “torch” function to avoid breaking a leg on the irregular trail surface. Next time I should remember to take my LED head lamp with me.

Great! Four PRs on Strava. Basically because I hadn’t run this particular trail. It was short, but great!

First time I ran with my new Polar OH1 optical heart rate arm band. I used it in standalone mode. I liked the comment that Polar Flow made after syncing the device:

I also had the device switched on during the drive back to the hotel, so you can also see my recovery curve there. Note that I had forgotten to set correct maximum heart rate, and this definitely wasn’t Tempo and Maximum training.

Then on to work. Lots of meetings, some of them up in Deer Valley, some of them on the other side of Phoenix, on Sky Harbor Circle, so some zipping up and down the I17 was involved as well. As you can see from the picture above, it was cloudy, and it even rained a bit, but still the weather is great, coming out of Minneapolis (or Brno).

Just before sunset, we managed to get in a hike up to Pinnacle Peak, so that was some light exercise as well, but mainly a way of showing my colleague a little bit of the beauty of Arizona. It is his first time in the US, and we didn’t have time to do much sightseeing, so at least Pinnacle Peak.

Saturday

Good news. My flight wasn’t as early as I thought, so there was plenty of time to do another trail run. I drove to Desert Vista Trailhead again, but this time I did a loop that I was familiar with.

It was a little faster than I had remembered, so I added a little back and forth on the same trail as Friday to complete at least 60 minutes. It was sunnier than on Friday, but it was colder and more windy, about 15 degrees C.

This is a nice run. It is not possible to run fast in the desert, because of the irregular trail surface, but there are short climbs that get your heart rate up, and the views are great. In the beginning you have a fantastic view of the city of Phoenix, and then you turn a corner and you feel like you are the only person on the planet.

At one point all the birds began to sing, and then they suddenly stopped. Perhaps some morning ritual.

This time I was running with both the Tickr X connected to my Garmin Forerunner and the Polar OH1 connected to the Polar Beat app. I wanted to compare the performance of the two heart rate monitors, and see if there is any downside on using the optical heart rate monitor. Here is a quick comparison chart. I took a TCX from Polar Flow and did the same for the data on Garmin Connect. Those sites are the first destination of the data from the respective devices. Of course I don’t know what data mangling they do, but I thought it was better than downloading both workouts from Strava.

I am quite satisfied with the result. Actually, the Tickr has some problems in the beginning (I didn’t moisten the chest belt before putting it on), and for those first few minutes I believe that the OH1 is more accurate. When you look in detail, you see some slight differences between the two sensors, but on the scale of a workout (and that is what I am interested in) this is negligible. All the features that I am looking for are there (quick rise when running up hill).

On Saturday afternoon I flew back home. First flight was PHX – JFK and it was great. We took a route over Flagstaff and I could see the Grand Canyon, Four Corners, and I recognized all the places we had visited on our RV vacation in the US.

The flight from JFK to Amsterdam was delayed by 2.5 hours, so I suddenly had a long overlay in Amsterdam. I used it to eat some haring. Something you can only get in The Netherlands, perhaps an acquired taste, but it is great:

Then the afternoon flight to Prague, where I discovered that my colleague’s check bag had made it but mine hadn’t, which was interesting given the fact that we had walked over to the transfer desk at Schiphol and made sure that our bags were on the same flight as ours – at least in “the system”.

We’re not at home today. Romana has an event in Hradec Kralove this afternoon. So we drove to my mother-in-law’s place and had lunch there. Then Romana drove on to her event and dropped me off at a point 15km from her parents’ place.

I took a few pictures in the first 5km, until the phone ran out of battery.

It was a 14 km run in total, through a few villages, then along the river Lane, the river Chrudimka through Pardubice town (nice parks) and then home.

The training plan prescribed another steady state erg, but the sun was shining and it was just such a beautiful winter day that I had to go out running.

There’s a little running event that I will participate in coming Thursday. It’s a 10k run starting in the next village, which is organized every year on the “struggle for freedom and democracy” holiday (celebrating the velvet revolution of 1989). That 10k run is on the same trails that I train on, so I can start running from home and check the trails.

The run was beautiful (and slow). The small lakes in the forest were covered with a very thin layer of ice.

When I arrived back home and closed the gate, I slammed it on my right index finger. It didn’t hurt much initially, because my hands were frozen, but when everything started to thaw it was quite painful.

Well, I can type this now, so that’s a sign that it’s not so serious. Finger is a little thick and there are interesting colors under the nail.

Just for fun, and because I love maps, I am showing the run overlaid on a few different maps:

The 19th Century map. I like how the tree rows are indicated on both sides of the big road

Geographical map. A modern highway is built next to the old road.

Finally, the hiking map. You can see the abundance of hiking/running trails. Running in these hills is never boring

Tomorrow: A travel day. Then a hotel gym in Sofia, Bulgaria on Tuesday.

This first plot is a comparison (made on rowsandall.com) between Friday’s 6k and the PB I set in February, which was 7 seconds faster. You can clearly see that on Friday my heart rate rose faster than on that PB. Actually, on Friday I was rowing faster than my PB schedule for the first 4 km. Just slightly, but looking at the February row, I allowed myself to pull more 1:52 strokes than I did last Friday. The difference is very very small, just 0.2 seconds in average.

But it’s interesting to look at “the scribbles”. The plot below looks like something your 1 year old daughter might draw, but it’s actually quite interesting. At least for me.

The red scribble is Friday’s row. The blue one is my PB. You can clearly see that the bulk of the row (the first 4 to 5km) is very similar. The difference is that in February I didn’t drop the stroke rate so low. I must have rowed more forceful strokes last Friday, and I wonder if that wore me out somehow.

After 4.5km it starts to become really interesting. In February I managed to climb to the top right of the graph (high watts at high stroke rate), while last Friday I climbed just a little and dropped the watts.

It’s a pity I didn’t have Painsled back then. If I had, I could have compared the average drive force for the two rows.

Instead of comparing with my PB row, I should perhaps compare with the row I did on November 11, 2015, exactly a year before Friday’s row.

In 2015, I rowed a 22:28, 8 seconds slower than on Friday, but it looks like the whole graph is shifted to the left by 1spm. In other words, a year ago, I rowed a higher stroke rate to achieve the same watt number.

In terms of heart rate, the numbers are very similar. An interesting drop in heart rate after about 1500m is present in both rows. I wonder what that is.

Saturday’s run

Headed to the lake in the morning. There was a big lactate testing going on. All rowers who are in selections for national teams need to do a lactate step test. The protocol was prescribed by the national rowing federation. Interestingly, it was 5 minutes with 2 minutes rest, 5 steps at prescribed watts. The watts were given by a table for sex and age category. Also, they had to be rowed on ergs on sliders.

The tests were combined with the other rowing club, so the locker room and erg room was full. We cannot row OTW because our summer dock is about 1m above the water level and nobody bothered to put out a winter dock.

I decided to go for a run.

I ran along the lake, then along the river, towards the castle. Just before the castle, I turned right on the blue trail. I was wondering if I could make a loop, but was afraid that that would make the run too long.

Here is my run overlaid on a tourist map of the region. The colored lines are hiking/running trails. My run is the thick light blue line starting on the lake shore in the bottom right corner. Here’s is what I should try and run next time:

Continue on the blue trail, run around the hill, pass Trnůvka, take the green trail at Rozdrojovice and get back to the lake at restaurant Princezna. But I guess it would be a bit longer than the 12km that I ran this time.

Last night I mentioned I would go running on South Mountain. Petr got interested and promised to join. My former boss used to take us on these exhausting hikes, climbs, rides or other things. Maybe I am copying him. But Petr seems to be exercising regularly. I met him on my morning runs on the resort and in the fitness center, so I wasn’t too worried.

Meeting at 5am in the lobby, then a 20 minute drive to the trailhead. We saw a coyote when we drove up the parking lot. Petr wasn’t too excited to run between coyotes and rattlesnakes. He ran with me for about 1o minutes, then announced that he would go his own tempo.

Anyway, I didn’t feel too guilty and started to run the climb at full speed. It was a very nice trail but quite steep. At times it was more like a leg strength exercise than running.

I ran for about 30 minutes which brought me almost to the top of the mountain. Nice views of the sunrise over Phoenix.

I met Petr about 10 minutes after I turned around. We took a few more pictures and ran back to the car. No more coyotes. No rattlesnakes. Just a few rabbits.

It was great to be outdoors and run on a trail. The cacti had little flowers on them. Here are the pictures from SportTracks: